Climbing Stairs at Short Intervals Throughout the Day Can Boost Your Health

Short bouts of stair climbing throughout the day can improve your health and fitness, reveals a new study.

Stair climbing workouts can boost your health and fitness, reports a new study. The findings of the study are published in the journal Applied Physiology, Nutrition and Metabolism.//

It just got harder to avoid exercise. A few minutes of stair climbing, at short intervals throughout the day, can improve cardiovascular health, according to new research from kinesiologists at McMaster University and UBC Okanagan.

Take the Stairs and Spend More Years in School to Have a Younger Brain
The brain age decreases by 0.95 years for each year of education, and by 0.58 years for every daily flight of stairs climbed.

‘Stair climbers are more likely to be fit and healthy compared to their sedentary counterparts, reveals a new study.’
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The findings suggest that virtually anyone can improve their fitness, anywhere, any time.

"The findings make it even easier for people to incorporate 'exercise snacks' into their day," says Martin Gibala, a professor of kinesiology at McMaster and senior author on the study.

"Those who work in office towers or live in apartment buildings can vigorously climb a few flights of stairs in the morning, at lunch, and in the evening and know they are getting an effective workout."

Taking Stairs may Give Equal Health Benefits as a Trip to Gym
The health benefits of small amounts of activity - even as small as one- and two-minute increments that add up to 30 minutes per day - can be just as beneficial as a trip to the gym.

Previous studies had shown that brief bouts of vigorous exercise, or sprint interval training (SIT), are effective when performed as a single session, with a few minutes of recovery between the intense bursts, requiring a total time commitment of 10 minutes or so.

For this study, researchers set out to determine if SIT exercise snacks or vigorous bouts of stairclimbing performed as single sprints spread throughout the day would be sufficient enough to improve cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF), an important healthy marker that is linked to longevity and cardiovascular disease risk.

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More Calories Burnt by Climbing Stairs Slowly
A recent study conducted by the University of Roehampton has found that climbing a flight of stairs one step at a time is more effective in burning calories than taking multiple stairs at a time.

One group of sedentary young adults vigorously climbed a three-flight stairwell, three times per day, separated by one to four hours of recovery. They repeated the protocol three times each week over the course of six weeks. The researchers compared the change in their fitness to a control group which did not exercise.

"We know that sprint interval training works, but we were a bit surprised to see that the stair snacking approach was also effective," says Jonathan Little, assistant professor at UBC's Okanagan campus and study co-author. "Vigorously climbing a few flights of stairs on your coffee or bathroom break during the day seems to be enough to boost fitness in people who are otherwise sedentary."